Comple works of swami vivekananda vol 4

Children at school think that some of their schoolfellows are the dearest beings that they have in life, or their fathers or mothers are so; then comes the husband or wife, and immediate

Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda Volume 4

Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda Volume 4

Addresses on Bhakti-Yoga

The Preparation

The First Steps

The Teacher of Spirituality

The Need of Symbols

The Chief Symbols

The Ishta

Home / Complete-Works / Volume 4 / Addresses on Bhakti-Yoga /

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THE PREPARATION

The best definition given of Bhakti-Yoga is perhaps embodied in the verse:

"May that love undying which the non-discriminating have for the fleeting

objects of the senses never leave this heart of mine — of me who seek after Thee!" We see what a strong love men, who do not know any better, have for sense-objects, for money, dress, their wives, children, friends, and possessions What a tremendous clinging they have to all these things! So in the above

prayer the sage says, "I will have that attachment, that tremendous clinging, only to Thee." This love, when given to God, is called Bhakti Bhakti is not destructive; it teaches us that no one of the faculties we have has been given in vain, that through them is the natural way to come to liberation Bhakti does not kill out our tendencies, it does not go against nature, but only gives it a

higher and more powerful direction How naturally we love objects of the

senses! We cannot but do so, because they are so real to us We do not

ordinarily see anything real about higher things, but when a man has seen

something real beyond the senses, beyond the universe of senses, the idea is that he can have a strong attachment, only it should be transferred to the object beyond the senses, which is God And when the same kind of love that has

before been given to sense-objects is given to God, it is called Bhakti

According to the sage Râmânuja, the following are the preparations for getting that intense love

The first is Viveka It is a very curious thing, especially to people of the West

It means, according to Ramanuja, "discrimination of food" Food contains all the energies that go to make up the forces of our body and mind; it has been transferred, and conserved, and given new directions in my body, but my body and mind have nothing essentially different from the food that I ate Just as the force and matter we find in the material world become body and mind in us, so, essentially, the difference between body and mind and the food we eat is only

in manifestation It being so, that out of the material particles of our food we construct the instrument of thought, and that from the finer forces lodged in these particles we manufacture thought itself, it naturally follows, that both this thought and the instrument will be modified by the food we take There are

certain kinds of food that produce a certain change in the mind; we see it every day There are other sorts which produce a change in the body, and in the long run have a tremendous effect on the mind It is a great thing to learn; a good deal of the misery we suffer is occasioned by the food we take You find that after a heavy and indigestible meal it is very hard to control the mind; it is

running, running all the time There are certain foods which are exciting; if you eat such food, you find that you cannot control the mind It is obvious that after drinking a large quantity of wine, or other alcoholic beverage, a man finds that his mind would not be controlled; it runs away from his control

According to Ramanuja, there are three things in food we must avoid First, there is Jâti, the nature, or species of the food, that must be considered All

exciting food should be avoided, as meat, for instance; this should not be taken because it is by its very nature impure We can get it only by taking the life of another We get pleasure for a moment, and another creature has to give up its life to give us that pleasure Not only so, but we demoralise other human

beings It would be rather better if every man who eats meat killed the animal himself; but, instead of doing so, society gets a class of persons to do that

business for them, for doing which, it hates them In England no butcher can serve on a jury, the idea being that he is cruel by nature Who makes him cruel? Society If we did not eat beef and mutton, there would be no butchers Eating meat is only allowable for people who do very hard work, and who are not

going to be Bhaktas; but if you are going to be Bhaktas, you should avoid meat Also, all exciting foods, such as onions, garlic, and all evil-smelling food, as

"sauerkraut" Any food that has been standing for days, till its condition is

changed, any food whose natural juices have been almost dried ups any food that is malodorous, should be avoided

The next thing that is to be considered as regards food is still more intricate to Western minds — it is what is called Âshraya, i.e the person from whom it comes This is rather a mysterious theory of the Hindus The idea is that each man has a certain aura round him, and whatever thing he touches, a part of his character, as it were, his influence, is left on it It is supposed that a man's

character emanates from him, as it were, like a physical force, and whatever he touches is affected by it So we must take care who touches our food when it is cooked; a wicked or immoral person must not touch it One who wants to be a

Bhakta must not dine with people whom he knows to be very wicked, because their infection will come through the food

The other form of purity to be observed is Nimitta, or instruments Dirt and dust must not be in food Food should not be brought from the market and

placed on the table unwashed We must be careful also about the saliva and other secretions The lips ought never, for instance, to be touched with the

fingers The mucous membrane is the most delicate part of the body, and all tendencies are conveyed very easily by the saliva Its contact, therefore, is to be regarded as not only offensive, but dangerous Again, we must not eat food, half of which has been eaten by someone else When these things are avoided

in food, it becomes pure; pure food brings a pure mind, and in a pure mind is a constant memory of God

Let me tell you the same thing as explained by another commentator,

Shankarâchârya, who takes quite another view This word for food, in Sanskrit,

is derived from the root, meaning to gather Âhâra means "gathered in" What

is his explanation? He says, the passage that when food is pure the mind will become pure really means that lest we become subject to the senses we should avoid the following: First as to attachment; we must not be extremely attached

to anything excepting God See everything, do everything, but be not attached

As soon as extreme attachment comes, a man loses himself, he is no more

master of himself, he is a slave If a woman is tremendously attached to a man, she becomes a slave to that man There is no use in being a slave There are higher things in this world than becoming a slave to a human being Love and

do good to everybody, but do not become a slave In the first place, attachment degenerates us, individually, and in the second place, makes us extremely

selfish Owing to this failing, we want to injure others to do good to those we love A good many of the wicked deeds done in this world are really done

through attachment to certain persons So all attachment excepting that for

good works should be avoided; but love should be given to everybody Then as

to jealousy There should be no jealousy in regard to objects of the senses;

jealousy is the root of all evil, and a most difficult thing to conquer Next,

delusion We always take one thing for another, and act upon that, with the result that we bring misery upon ourselves We take the bad for the good

Anything that titillates our nerves for a moment we think; as the highest good,

and plunge into it immediately, but find, when it is too late, that it has given us

a tremendous blow Every day, we run into this error, and we often continue in

it all our lives When the senses, without being extremely attached, without jealousy, or without delusion, work in the world, such work or collection of impressions is called pure food, according to Shankaracharya When pure food

is taken, the mind is able to take in objects and think about them without

attachment, jealousy or delusion; then the mind becomes pure, and then there is constant memory of God in that mind

It is quite natural for one to say that Shankara's meaning is the best, but I wish

to add that one should not neglect Ramanuja's interpretation either It is only when you take care of the real material food that the rest will come It is very true that mind is the master, but very few of us are not bound by the senses We are all controlled by matter; and as long as we are so controlled, we must take material aids; and then, when we have become strong, we can eat or drink

anything we like We have to follow Ramanuja in taking care about food and drink; at the same time we must also take care about our mental food It is very easy to take care about material food, but mental work must go along with it; then gradually our spiritual self will become stronger and stronger, and the

physical self less assertive Then will food hurt you no more The great danger

is that every man wants to jump at the highest ideal, but jumping is not the

way That ends only in a fall We are bound down here, and we have to break our chains slowly This is called Viveka, discrimination

The next is called Vimoka, freedom from desires He who wants to love God must get rid of extreme desires, desire nothing except God This world is good

so far as it helps one to go to the higher world The objects of the senses are good so far as they help us to attain higher objects We always forget that this world is a means to an end, and not an end itself If this were the end we should

be immortal here in our physical body; we should never die But we see people every moment dying around us, and yet, foolishly, we think we shall never die; and from that conviction we come to think that this life is the goal That is the case with ninety-nine per cent of us This notion should be given up at once This world is good so far as it is a means to perfect ourselves; and as soon as it has ceased to be so, it is evil So wife, husband, children, money and learning, are good so long as they help us forward; but as soon as they cease to do that,

they are nothing but evil If the wife help us to attain God, she is a good wife;

so with a husband or a child If money help a man to do good to others, it is of some value; but if not, it is simply a mass of evil, and the sooner it is got rid of, the better

The next is Abhyâsa, practice The mind should always go towards God No other things have any right to withhold it It should continuously think of God, though this is a very hard task; yet it can be done by persistent practice What

we are now is the result of our past practice Again, practice makes us what we shall be So practice the other way; one sort of turning round has brought us this way, turn the other way and get out of it as soon as you can Thinking of the senses has brought us down here — to cry one moment, to rejoice the next,

to be at the mercy of every breeze, slave to everything This is shameful, and yet we call ourselves spirits Go the other way, think of God; let the mind not think of any physical or mental enjoyment, but of God alone When it tries to think of anything else, give it a good blow, so that it may turn round and think

of God As oil poured from one vessel to another falls in an unbroken line, as chimes coming from a distance fall upon the ear as one continuous sound, so should the mind flow towards God in one continuous stream We should not only impose this practice on the mind, but the senses too should be employed Instead of hearing foolish things, we must hear about God; instead of talking foolish words, we must talk of God Instead of reading foolish books, we must read good ones which tell of God

The greatest aid to this practice of keeping God in memory is, perhaps, music The Lord says to Nârada, the great teacher of Bhakti, "I do not live in heaven, nor do I live in the heart of the Yogi, but where My devotees sing My praise, there am I" Music has such tremendous power over the human mind; it brings

it to concentration in a moment You will find the dull, ignorant, low, brute-like human beings, who never steady their mind for a moment at other times, when they hear attractive music, immediately become charmed and concentrated Even the minds of animals, such as dogs, lions, cats, and serpents, become

charmed with music

The next is Kriyâ, work — doing good to others The memory of God will not come to the selfish man The more we come out and do good to others, the

more our hearts will be purified, and God will be in them According to our scriptures, there are five sorts of work, called the fivefold sacrifice First, study

A man must study every day something holy and good Second, worship of God, angels, or saints, as it may be Third, our duty to our forefathers Fourth, our duty to human beings Man has no right to live in a house himself, until he builds for the poor also, or for anybody who needs it The householder's house should be open to everybody that is poor and suffering; then he is a real

householder If he builds a house only for himself and his wife to enjoy, he will never be a lover of God No man has the right to cook food only for himself; it

is for others, and he should have what remains It is a common practice in India that when the season s produce first comes into the market, such as strawberries

or mangoes, a man buys some of them and gives to the poor Then he eats of them; and it is a very good example to follow in this country This training will make a man unselfish, and at the same time, be an excellent object-lesson to his wife and children The Hebrews in olden times used to give the first fruits to God The first of everything should go to the poor; we have only a right to what remains The poor are God's representatives; anyone that suffers is His

representative Without giving, he who eats and enjoys eating, enjoys sin Fifth, our duty to the lower animals It is diabolical to say that all animals are created for men to be killed and used in any way man likes It is the devil's gospel, not God's Think how diabolical it is to cut them up to see whether a nerve quivers

or not, in a certain part of the body I am glad that in our country such things are not countenanced by the Hindus, whatever encouragement they may get from the foreign government they are under One portion of the food cooked in

a household belongs to the animals also They should be given food every day; there ought to be hospitals in every city in this country for poor, lame, or blind horses, cows, dogs, and cats, where they should be fed and taken care of

Then there is Kalyâna, purity, which comprises the following: Satya,

truthfulness He who is true, unto him the God of truth comes Thought, word, and deed should be perfectly true Next Ârjava, straightforwardness, rectitude The word means, to be simple, no crookedness in the heart, no double-dealing Even if it is a little harsh, go straightforward, and not crookedly Dayâ, pity, compassion Ahimsâ, not injuring any being by thought, word, or deed Dâna, charity There is no higher virtue than charity The lowest man is he whose

hand draws in, in receiving; and he is the highest man whose hand goes out in

giving The hand was made to give always Give the last bit of bread you have even if you are starving You will be free in a moment if you starve yourself to death by giving to another Immediately you will be perfect, you will become God People who have children are bound already They cannot give away They want to enjoy their children, and they must pay for it Are there not

enough children in the world? It is only selfishness which says, "I'll have a

child for myself"

The next is Anavasâda — not desponding, cheerfulness Despondency is not religion, whatever else it may be By being pleasant always and smiling, it

takes you nearer to God, nearer than any prayer How can those minds that are gloomy and dull love? If they talk of love, it is false; they want to hurt others Think of the fanatics; they make the longest faces, and all their religion is to fight against others in word and act Think of what they have done in the past, and of what they would do now if they were given a free hand They would deluge the whole world in blood tomorrow if it would bring them power By worshipping power and making long faces, they lose every bit of love from their hearts So the man who always feels miserable will never come to God It

is not religion, it is diabolism to say, "I am so miserable." Every man has his own burden to bear If you are miserable, try to be happy, try to conquer it

God is not to be reached by the weak Never be weak You must be strong; you have infinite strength within you How else will you conquer anything? How else will you come to God? At the same time you must avoid excessive

merriment, Uddharsha, as it is called A mind in that state never becomes calm;

it becomes fickle Excessive merriment will always be followed by sorrow Tears and laughter are near kin People so often run from one extreme to the other Let the mind be cheerful, but calm Never let it run into excesses,

because every excess will be followed by a reaction

These, according to Ramanuja, are the preparations for Bhakti

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THE FIRST STEPS

The philosophers who wrote on Bhakti defined it as extreme love for God

Why a man should love God is the question to be solved; and until we

understand that, we shall not be able to grasp the subject at all There are two entirely different ideals of life A man of any country who has any religion

knows that he is a body and a spirit also But there is a great deal of difference

as to the goal of human life

In Western countries, as a rule, people lay more stress on the body aspect of man; those philosophers who wrote on Bhakti in India laid stress on the

spiritual side of man; and this difference seems to be typical of the Oriental and Occidental nations It is so even in common language In England, when

speaking of death it is said, a man gave up his ghost; in India, a man gave up

his body The one idea is that man is a body and has a soul; the other that man

is a soul and has a body More intricate problems arise out of this It naturally

follows that the ideal which holds that man is a body and has a soul lays all the stress on the body If you ask why man lives, you will be told it is to enjoy the senses, to enjoy possessions and wealth He cannot dream of anything beyond even if he is told of it; his idea of a future life would be a continuation of this enjoyment He is very sorry that it cannot continue all the time here, but he has

to depart; and he thinks that somehow or other he will go to some place where the same thing will be renewed He will have the same enjoyments, the same senses, only heightened and strengthened He wants to worship Cod, because God is the means to attain this end The goal of his life is enjoyment of sense-objects, and he comes to know there is a Being who can give him a very long lease of these enjoyments, and that is why he worships God

On the other hand the Indian idea is that God is the goal of life; there is nothing beyond God, and the sense-enjoyments are simply something through which

we are passing now in the hope of getting better things Not only so; it would

be disastrous and terrible if man had nothing but sense-enjoyments In our

everyday life we find that the less the sense-enjoyments, the higher the life of the man Look at the dog when he eats No man ever ate with the same

satisfaction Observe the pig giving grunts of satisfaction as he eats; it is his heaven, and if the greatest archangel came and looked on, the pig would not even notice him His whole existence is in his eating No man was ever born who could eat that way Think of the power of hearing in the lower animals, the power of seeing; all their senses are highly developed Their enjoyment of the senses is extreme; they become simply mad with delight and pleasure And the lower the man also, the more delight he finds in the senses As he gets higher, the goal becomes reason and love In proportion as these faculties develop, he loses the power of enjoying the senses

For illustration's sake, if we take for granted that a certain amount of power is given to man, and that that can be spent either on the body, or the mind, or the spirit, then all the powers spent on any one of these leaves just so much less to

be expended on the others The ignorant or savage races have much stronger sensual faculties than the civilised races, and this is, in fact, one of the lessons

we learn from history that as a nation becomes civilised the nerve organisation becomes finer, and they become physically weaker Civilise a savage race, and you will find the same thing; another barbarian race comes up and conquers it

It is nearly always the barbarian race that conquers We see then that if we

desire only to have sense-enjoyments all the time, we

degrade ourselves to the brute state A man does not know what he is asking for when he says, he wants to go to a place where his sense-enjoyments will be intensified; that he can only have by going down to the brutes

So with men desiring a heaven full of sense-pleasures They are like swine

wallowing in the mire of the senses, unable to see anything beyond This enjoyment is what they want, and the loss of it is the loss of heaven to them These can never be Bhaktas in the highest sense of the word; they can never be true lovers of God At the same time, though this lower ideal be followed for a time, it will also in course of time change, each man will find that there is

sense-something higher, of which he did not know, and so this clinging to life and to things of the senses will gradually die away When I was a little boy at school, I had a fight with another schoolfellow about some sweetmeats, and he being the stronger boy snatched them from my hand I remember the feeling I had; I

thought that boy was the most wicked boy ever born, and that as soon as I grew strong enough I would punish him; there was no punishment sufficient for his

wickedness We have both grown up now, and we are fast friends This world

is full of babies to whom eating and drinking, and all these little cakes are

everything They will dream of these cakes, and their idea of future life is

where these cakes will be plentiful Think of the American Indian who believes that his future life will be in a place which is a very good hunting ground Each one of us has an idea of a heaven just as we want it to be; but in course of time,

as we grow older and see higher things, we catch higher glimpses beyond But let us not dispense with our ideas of future life in the ordinary way of modern times, by not believing in anything — that is destruction The agnostic who thus destroys everything is mistaken, the Bhakta sees higher The agnostic does not want to go to heaven, because he has none; while the Bhakta does not want

to go to heaven, because he thinks it is child's play What he wants is God

What can be a higher end than God? God Himself is the highest goal of man; see Him, enjoy Him We can never conceive anything higher, because God is perfection We cannot conceive of any higher enjoyment than that of love, but this word love has different meanings It does not mean the ordinary selfish love of the world; it is blasphemy to call that love The love for our children and our wives is mere animal love; that love which is perfectly unselfish is the only love, and that is of God It is a very difficult thing to attain to We are

passing through all these different loves — love of children, father, mother, and

so forth We slowly exercise the faculty of love; but in the majority of cases we never learn anything from it, we become bound to one step, to one person In some cases men come out of this bondage Men are ever running after wives and wealth and fame in this world; sometimes they are hit very hard on the

head, and they find out what this world really is No one in this world can

really love anything but God Man finds out that human love is all hollow Men cannot love though they talk of it The wife says she loves her husband and kisses him; but as soon as he dies, the first thing she thinks about is the bank account, and what she shall do the next day The husband loves the wife; but when she becomes sick and loses her beauty, or becomes haggard, or makes a mistake, he ceases to care for her All the love of the world is hypocrisy and hollowness

A finite subject cannot love, nor a finite object be loved When the object of the love of a man is dying every moment, and his mind also is constantly changing

as he grows, what eternal love can you expect to find in the world? There

cannot be any real love but in God: why then all these loves? These are mere stages There is a power behind impelling us forward, we do not know where to seek for the real object, but this love is sending us forward in search of it

Again and again we find out our mistake We grasp something, and find it slips through our fingers, and then we grasp something else Thus on and on we go, till at last comes light; we come to God, the only One who loves His love

knows no change and is ever ready to take us in How long would any of you bear with me if I injured you? He in whose mind is no anger, hatred, or envy, who never loses his balance, dies, or is born, who is he but God? But the path

to God is long and difficult, and very few people attain Him We are all babies struggling Millions of people make a trade of religion A few men in a century attain to that love of God, and the whole country becomes blessed and

hallowed When a son of God appears, a whole country becomes blessed It is true that few such are born in any one century in the whole world, but all

should strive to attain that love of God Who knows but you or I may be the next to attain? Let us struggle therefore

We say that a wife loves her husband She thinks that her whole soul is

absorbed in him: a baby comes and half of it goes out to the baby, or more She herself will feel that the same love of husband does not exist now So with the father We always find that when more intense objects of love come to us, the previous love slowly vanishes Children at school think that some of their

schoolfellows are the dearest beings that they have in life, or their fathers or mothers are so; then comes the husband or wife, and immediately the old

feeling disappears, and the new love becomes uppermost One star arises,

another bigger one comes, and then a still bigger one, and at last the sun comes, and all the lesser lights vanish That sun is God The stars are the smaller loves When that Sun bursts upon him, a man becomes mad what Emerson calls "a God-intoxicated man" Man becomes transfigured into God, everything is

merged in that one ocean of love Ordinary love is mere animal attraction

Otherwise why is the distinction between the sexes? If one kneels before an image, it is dreadful idolatry; but if one kneels before husband or wife, it is

quite permissible!

The world presents to us manifold stages of love We have first to clear the

ground Upon our view of life the whole theory of love will rest To think that this world is the aim and end of life is brutal and degenerating Any man who starts in life with that idea degenerates himself He will never rise higher, he will never catch this glimpse from behind, he will always be a slave to the

senses He will struggle for the dollar that will get him a few cakes to eat

Better die than live that life Slaves of this world, slaves of the senses, let us rouse ourselves; there is something higher than this sense-life Do you think that man, the Infinite Spirit was born to be a slave to his eyes, his nose, and his ears? There is an Infinite, Omniscient Spirit behind that can do everything,

break every bond; and that Spirit we are, and we get that power through love This is the ideal we must remember We cannot, of course, get it in a day We may fancy that we have it, but it is a fancy after all; it is a long, long way off

We must take man where he stands, and help him upwards Man stands in

materialism; you and I are materialists Our talking about God and Spirit is

good; but it is simply the vogue in our society to talk thus: we have learnt it parrot-like and repeat it So we have to take ourselves where we are as

materialists, and must take the help of matter and go on slowly until we

become real spiritualists, and feel ourselves spirits, understand the spirit, and find that this world which we call the infinite is but a gross external form of that world which is behind

But something besides that is necessary You read in the Sermon on the Mount,

"Ask, and it shall be given (to) you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall

be opened unto you." The difficulty is, who seeks, who wants? We all say we know God One man writes a book to disprove God, another to prove Him One man thinks it his duty to prove Him all his life; another, to disprove Him, and

he goes about to teach man there is no God What is the use of writing a book either to prove or disprove God? What does it matter to most people whether there is a God or not ? The majority of men work just like a machine with no thought of God and feeling no need of Him Then one day comes Death and says, "Come." The man says, "Wait a little, I want a little more time I want to see my son grow a little bigger." But Death says, "Come at once." So it goes

on So goes poor John What shall we say to poor John? He never found

anything in which God was the highest; perhaps he was a pig in the past, and

he is much better as a man But there are some who get a little awakening

Some misery comes, someone whom we love most dies, that upon which we

had bent our whole soul, that for which we had cheated the whole world and perhaps our own brother, that vanishes, and a blow comes to us Perhaps a

voice comes in our soul and asks, "What after this?" Sometimes death comes without a blow, but such cases are few Most of us, when anything slips

through our fingers, say, "What next?" How we cling to the senses! You have heard of a drowning man clutching at a straw; a man will clutch at a straw first, and when it fails, he will say someone must help him Still people must, as the English phrase goes, "sow their wild oats", before they can rise to higher

things

Bhakti is a religion Religion is not for the many, that is impossible A sort of knee-drill, standing up and sitting down, may be suited for the many; but

religion is for the few There are in every country only a few hundreds who can

be, and will be religious The others cannot be religious, because they will not

be awakened, and they do not want to be The chief thing is to want God We

want everything except God, because our ordinary wants are supplied by the external world; it is only when our necessities have gone beyond the external world that we want a supply from the internal, from God So long as our needs are confined within the narrow limits of this physical universe, we cannot have any need for God; it is only when we have become satiated with everything here that we look beyond for a supply It is only when the need is there that the demand will come Have done with this child's play of the world as soon as you can, and then you will feel the necessity of something beyond the world, and the first step in religion will come

There is a form of religion which is fashionable My friend has much furniture

in her parlour; it is the fashion to have a Japanese vase, so she must have one even if it costs a thousand dollars In the same way she will have a little

religion and join a church Bhakti is not for such That is not want Want is that

without which we cannot live We want breath, we want food, we want clothes; without them we cannot live When a man loves a woman in this world, there are times when he feels that without her he cannot live, although that is a

mistake When a husband dies, the wife thinks she cannot live without him; but she lives all the same This is the secret of necessity: it is that without which we cannot live; either it must come to us or we die When the time comes that we feel the same about God, or in other words, we want something beyond this

world, something above all material forces, then we may become Bhaktas

What are our little lives when for a moment the cloud passes away, and we get one glimpse from beyond, and for that moment all these lower desires seem like a drop in the ocean? Then the soul grows, and feels the want of God, and must have Him

The first step is: What do we want? Let us ask ourselves this question every

day, do we want God? You may read all the books in the universe, but this love

is not to be had by the power of speech, not by the highest intellect, not by the study of various sciences He who desires God will get Love, unto him God gives Himself Love is always mutual, reflective You may hate me, and if I want to love you, you repulse me But if I persist, in a month or a year you are bound to love me It is a wellknown psychological phenomenon As the loving wife thinks of her departed husband, with the same love we must desire the Lord, and then we will find God, and all books and the various sciences would not be able to teach us anything By reading books we become parrots; no one becomes learned by reading books If a man reads but one word of love, he indeed becomes learned So we want first to get that desire

Let us ask ourselves each day, "Do we want Gods" When we begin to talk

religion, and especially when we take a high position and begin to teach others,

we must ask ourselves the same question I find many times that I don't want God, I want bread more I may go mad if I don't get a piece of bread; many ladies will go mad if they don't get a diamond pin, but they do not have the

same desire for God; they do not know the only Reality that is in the universe There is a proverb in our language — If I want to be a hunter, I'll hunt the

rhinoceros; if I want to be a robber, I'll rob the king's treasury What is the use

of robbing beggars or hunting ants? So if you want to love, love God Who cares for these things of the world? This world is utterly false; all the great

teachers of the world found that out; there is no way out of it but through God

He is the goal of our life; all ideas that the world is the goal of life are

pernicious This world and this body have their own value, a secondary value,

as a means to an end; but the world should not be the end Unfortunately, too often we make the world the end and God the means We find people going to church and saying, "God, give me such and such; God, heal my disease." They want nice healthy bodies; and because they hear that someone will do this work

for them, they go and pray to Him It is better to be an atheist than to have such

an idea of religion As I have told you, this Bhakti is the highest ideal; I don't know whether we shall reach it or not in millions of years to come, but we must make it our highest ideal, make our senses aim at the highest If we cannot get

to the end, we shall at least come nearer to it We have slowly to work through the world and the senses to reach God

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THE TEACHER OF SPIRITUALITY

Every soul is destined to be perfect, and every being, in the end, will attain to that state Whatever we are now is the result of whatever we have been or

thought in the past; and whatever we shall be in the future will be the result of what we do or think now But this does not preclude our receiving help from outside; the possibilities of the soul are always quickened by some help from outside, so much so that in the vast majority of cases in the world, help from outside is almost absolutely necessary Quickening influence comes from

outside, and that works upon our own potentialities; and then the growth

begins, spiritual life comes, and man becomes holy and perfect in the end This quickening impulse which comes from outside cannot be received from books; the soul can receive impulse only from another soul, and from nothing else We may study books all our lives, we may become very intellectual, but in the end

we find we have not developed at all spiritually It does not follow that a high order of intellectual development always shows an equivalent development of the spiritual side of man; on the other hand, we find cases almost every day where the intellect has become very highly developed at the expense of the spirit

Now in intellectual development we can get much help from books, but in

spiritual development, almost nothing In studying books, sometimes we are deluded into thinking that we are being spiritually helped; but if we analyse ourselves, we shall find that only our intellect has been helped, and not the

spirit That is the reason why almost everyone of us can speak most

wonderfully on spiritual subjects, but when the time of action comes, we find ourselves so woefully deficient It is because books cannot give us that impulse from outside To quicken the spirit, that impulse must come from another soul

That soul from which this impulse comes is called the Guru, the teacher; and the soul to which the impulse is conveyed is called the disciple, the student In order to convey this impulse, in the first place, the soul from which it comes must possess the power of transmitting it, as it were, to another; and in the

second place, the object to which it is transmitted must be fit to receive it The

seed must be a living seed, and the field must be ready ploughed; and when both these conditions are fulfilled, a wonderful growth of religion takes place

"The speaker of religion must be wonderful, so must the hearer be"; and when both of these are really wonderful, extraordinary, then alone will splendid

spiritual growth come, and not otherwise These are the real teachers, and these are the real students Besides these, the others are playing with spirituality — just having a little intellectual struggle, just satisfying a little curiosity — but are standing only on the outward fringe of the horizon of religion There is

some value in that; real thirst for religion may thus be awakened; all comes in course of time It is a mysterious law of nature that as soon as the field is ready

the seed must come, as soon as the soul wants religion, the transmitter of

religious force must come "The seeking sinner meeteth the seeking Saviour."

When the power that attracts in the receiving soul is full and ripe, the power which answers to that attraction must come

But there are great dangers in the way There is the danger to the receiving soul

of mistaking its momentary emotion for real religious yearning We find that in ourselves Many times in our lives, somebody dies whom we loved; we receive

a blow; for a moment we think that this world is slipping between our fingers, and that we want something higher, and that we are going to be religious In a few days that wave passes away, and we are left stranded where we were We ofttimes mistake such impulses for real thirst after religion, but so long as these momentary emotions are thus mistaken, that continuous, real want of the soul will not come, and we shall not find the "transmitter"

So when we complain that we have not got the truth, and that we want it so much, instead of complaining, our first duty ought to be to look into our own

souls and find whether we really want it In the vast majority of cases we shall

find that we are not fit; we do not want; there was no thirst after the spiritual

There are still more difficulties for the "transmitter" There are many who,

though immersed in ignorance, yet, in the pride of their hearts, think they know everything, and not only do not stop there, but offer to take others on their

shoulders, and thus "the blind leading the blind, they both fall into the ditch" The world is full of these; everyone wants to be a teacher, every beggar wants

to make a gift of a million dollars Just as the latter is ridiculous, so are these

teachers

How are we to know a teacher then? In the first place, the sun requires no torch

to make it visible We do not light a candle to see the sun When the sun rises,

we instinctively become aware of its rising; and when a teacher of men comes

to help us, the soul will instinctively know that it has found the truth Truth stands on its own evidences; it does not require any other testimony to attest it;

it is self-effulgent It penetrates into the inmost recesses of our nature, and the whole universe stands up and says, "This is Truth." These are the very great teachers, but we can get help from the lesser ones also; and as we ourselves are not always sufficiently intuitive to be certain of our judgment of the man from whom we receive, there ought to be certain tests There are certain conditions necessary in the taught, and also in the teacher

The conditions necessary in the taught are purity, a real thirst after knowledge, and perseverance No impure soul can be religious; that is the one great

condition; purity in every way is absolutely necessary The other condition is a

real thirst after knowledge Who wants? That is the question We get whatever

we want — that is an old, old law He who wants, gets To want religion is a very difficult thing, not so easy as we generally think Then we always forget that religion does not consist in hearing talks, or in reading books, but it is a continuous struggle, a grappling with our own nature, a continuous fight till the victory is achieved It is not a question of one or two days, of years, or of lives, but it may be hundreds of lifetimes, and we must be ready for that It may come immediately, or it may not come in hundreds of lifetimes; and we must be

ready for that The student who sets out with such a spirit finds success

In the teacher we must first see that he knows the secret of the scriptures The whole world reads scriptures — Bibles, Vedas, Korans, and others; but they are only words, external arrangement, syntax, the etymology, the philology, the dry bones of religion The teacher may be able to find what is the age of any book, but words are only the external forms in which things come Those who deal too much in words and let the mind run always in the force of words lose the

spirit So the teacher must be able to know the spirit of the scriptures The

network of words is like a huge forest in which the human mind loses itself and finds no way out The various methods of joining words, the various methods

of speaking a beautiful language, the various methods of explaining the dicta of

the scriptures, are only for the enjoyment of the learned They do not attain

perfection; they are simply desirous to show their learning, so that the world may praise them and see that they are learned men You will find that no one of the great teachers of the world went into these various explanations of texts; on their part there is no attempt at "text-torturing", no saying, "This word means this, and this is the philological connection between this and that word." You study all the great teachers the world has produced, and you will see that no one of them goes that way Yet they taught, while others, who have nothing to teach, will take up a word and write a three-volume book on its origin and use

As my Master used to say, what would you think of men who went into a

mango orchard and busied themselves in counting the leaves and examining the colour of the leaves, the size of the twigs, the number of branches, and so forth, while only one of them had the sense to begin to eat the mangoes? So leave this counting of leaves and twigs and this note-taking to others That work has its own value in its proper place, but not here in the spiritual realm Men never become spiritual through such work; you have never once seen a strong

spiritual man among these "leaf-counters" Religion is the highest aim of man, the highest glory, but it does not require "leaf-counting" If you want to be a Christian, it is not necessary to know whether Christ was born in Jerusalem or Bethlehem or just the exact date on which he pronounced the Sermon on the

Mount; you only require to feel the Sermon on the Mount It is not necessary to

read two thousand words on when it was delivered All that is for the

enjoyment of the learned Let them have it; say amen to that Let us eat the

mangoes

The second condition necessary in the teacher is that he must be sinless The question was once asked me in England by a friend, "Why should we look to the personality of a teacher? We have only to judge of what he says, and take that up." Not so If a man wants to teach me something of dynamics or

chemistry or any other physical science, he may be of any character; he can still teach dynamics or any other science For the knowledge that the physical sciences require is simply intellectual and depends on intellectual strength; a man can have in such a case a gigantic intellectual power without the least

development of his soul But in the spiritual sciences it is impossible from first

to last that there can be any spiritual light in that soul which is impure What

can such a soul teach? It knows nothing Spiritual truth is purity "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God" In that one sentence is the gist of all religions If you have learnt that, all that has been said in the past and all that it

is possible to say in the future, you have known; you need not look into

anything else, for you have all that is necessary in that one sentence; it could save the world, were all the other scriptures lost A vision of God, a glimpse of the beyond never comes until the soul is pure Therefore in the teacher of

spirituality, purity is the one thing indispensable; we must see first what he is, and then what he says Not so with intellectual teachers; there we care more for

what he says than what he is With the teacher of religion we must first and foremost see what he is, and then alone comes the value of the words, because

he is the transmitter What will he transmit, if he has not flat spiritual power in him? To give a simile: If a heater is hot, it can convey heat vibrations, but if not, it is impossible to do so Even so is the case with the mental vibrations of the religious teacher which he conveys to the mind of the taught It is a

question of transference, and not of stimulating only our intellectual faculties Some power, real and tangible, goes out from the teacher and begins to grow in the mind of the taught Therefore the necessary condition is that the teacher must be true

The third condition is motive We should see that he does not teach with any ulterior motive, for name, or fame, or anything else, but simply for love, pure love for you When spiritual forces are transmitted from the teacher to the

taught, they can only be conveyed through the medium of love; there is no

other medium that can convey them Any other motive, such as gain or name, would immediately destroy the conveying medium; therefore all must be done through love One who has known God can alone be a teacher When you see that in the teacher these conditions are fulfilled, you are safe; if they are not fulfilled, it is unwise to accept him There is a great risk, if he cannot convey goodness, of his conveying wickedness sometimes This must be guarded

against; therefore it naturally follows that we cannot be taught by anybody and everybody

The preaching of sermons by brooks and stones may be true as a poetical figure but no one can preach a single grain of truth until he has it in himself To whom

do the brooks preach sermons? To that human soul only whose lotus of life has

already opened When the heart has been opened, it can receive teaching from the brooks or the stones — it can get some religious teaching from all these; but the unopened heart will see nothing but brooks and rolling stones A blind man may come to a museum, but he comes and goes only; if he is to see, his eyes must first be opened This eye-opener of religion is the teacher With the teacher, therefore, our relationship is that of ancestor and descendant; the

teacher is the spiritual ancestor, and the disciple is the spiritual descendant It is all very well to talk of liberty and independence, but without humility,

submission, veneration, and faith, there will not be any religion It is a

significant fact that where this relation still exists between the teacher and the taught, there alone gigantic spiritual souls grow; but in those who have thrown

it off religion is made into a diversion In nations and churches where this

relation between teacher and taught is not maintained spirituality is almost an unknown quantity It never comes without that feeling; there is no one to

transmit and no one to be transmitted to, because they are all independent Of

whom can they learn? And if they come to learn, they come to buy learning

Give me a dollar's worth of religion; cannot I pay a dollar for it? Religion

cannot be got that way!

There is nothing higher and holier than the knowledge which comes to the soul transmitted by a spiritual teacher If a man has become a perfect Yogi it comes

by itself, but it cannot be got in books You may go and knock your head

against the four corners of the world, seek in the Himalayas, the Alps, the

Caucasus, the Desert of Gobi or Sahara, or the bottom of the sea, but it will not come until you find a teacher Find the teacher, serve him as a child, open your heart to his influence, see in him God manifested Our attention should be fixed

on the teacher as the highest manifestation of God; and as the power of

attention concentrates there, the picture of the teacher as man will melt away; the frame will vanish, and the real God will be left there Those that come to truth with such a spirit of veneration and love — for them the Lord of truth

speaks the most wonderful words "Take thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground" Wherever His name is spoken, that place is holy How much more so is a man who speaks His name, and with what veneration ought we to approach a man out of whom come spiritual

truths! This is the spirit in which we are to be taught Such teachers are few in number, no doubt, in this world, but the world is never altogether without them

The moment it is absolutely bereft of these, it will cease to be, it will become a hideous hell and will just drop These teachers are the fair flowers of human life and keep the world going; it is the strength that is manifested from these hearts of life that keeps the bounds of society intact

Beyond these is another set of teachers, the Christs of the world These

Teachers of all teachers represent God Himself in the form of man They are much higher; they can transmit spirituality with a touch, with a wish, which makes even the lowest and most degraded characters saints in one second Do you not read of how they used to do these things? They are not the teachers about whom I was speaking; they are the Teachers of all teachers, the greatest manifestations of God to man; we cannot see God except through them We cannot help worshipping them, and they are the only beings we are bound to worship

No man bath "seen" God but as He is manifested in the Son We cannot see God If we try to see Him, we make a hideous caricature of God There is an Indian story that an ignorant man was asked to make an image of the God

Shiva, and after days of struggle he made an image of a monkey So whenever

we attempt to make an image of God, we make a caricature of Him, because

we cannot understand Him as anything higher than man so long as we are men The time will come when we transcend our human nature and know Him as He is; but so long as we are men we must worship Him in man Talk as we may, try as we may, we cannot see God except as a man We may deliver great

intellectual speeches, become very great rationalists, and prove that these tales

of God as all nonsense, but let us come to practical common sense What is behind this remarkable intellect? Zero, nothing, simply so much froth When next you hear a man delivering great intellectual lectures against this worship

of God, get hold of him and ask him what is his idea of God, what he means by

"omnipotence", and "omniscience", and "omnipresent love", and so forth,

beyond the spelling of the words He means nothing, he cannot formulate an idea, he is no better than the man in the street who has not read a single book That man in the street, however, is quiet and does not disturb the world, while the other man's arguments cause disturbance He has no actual perception, and both are on the same plane

Religion is realisation, and you must make the sharpest distinction between talk and realisation What you perceive in your soul is realisation Man has no idea

of the Spirit, he has to think of it with the forms he has before him He has to think of the blue skies, or the expansive fields, or the sea, or something huge How else can you think of God? So what are you doing in reality? You are

talking of omnipresence, and thinking of the sea Is God the sea? A little more common sense is required Nothing is so uncommon as common sense, the

world is too full of talk A truce to all this frothy argument of the world We are

by our present constitution limited and bound to see God as man If the

buffaloes want to worship God, they will see Him as a huge buffalo If a fish wants to worship God, it will have to think of Him as a big fish You and I, the buffalo, the fish, each represents so many different vessels All these go to the sea to be filled with water according to the shape of each vessel In each of

these vessels is nothing but water So with God When men see Him, they see Him as man, and the animals as animal — each according to his ideal That is the only way you can see Him; you have to worship Him as man, because there

is no other way out of it Two classes of men do not worship God as man — the human brute who has no religion, and the Paramahamsa (highest Yogi) who has gone beyond humanity, who has thrown off his mind and body and gone beyond the limits of nature All nature has become his Self He has neither

mind nor body, and can worship God as God, as can a Jesus or a Buddha They did not worship God as man The other extreme is the human brute You know how two extremes look alike Similar is the case with the extreme of ignorance and the other extreme of knowledge; neither of these worships anybody The extremely ignorant do not worship God, not being developed enough to feel the need for so doing Those that have attained the highest knowledge also do not worship God — having realised and become one with God God never

worships God Between these two poles of existence, if anyone tells you he is not going to worship God as man, take care of him He is an irresponsible

talker, he is mistaken; his religion is for frothy thinkers, it is intellectual

nonsense

Therefore it is absolutely necessary to worship God as man, and blessed are those races which have such a "God-man" to worship Christians have such a God-man in Christ; therefore cling close to Christ; never give up Christ That is the natural way to see God; see God in man All our ideas of God are

concentrated there The great limitation Christians have is that they do not heed other manifestations of God besides Christ He was a manifestation of God; so was Buddha; so were some others, and there will be hundreds of others Do not limit God anywhere Pay all the reverence that you think is due to God, to

Christ; that is the only worship we can have God cannot be worshipped; He is the immanent Being of the universe It is only to His manifestation as man that

we can pray It would be a very good plan, when Christians pray, to say, "in the name of Christ" It would be wise to stop praying to God, and only pray to

Christ God understands human failings and becomes a man to do good to

humanity "Whenever virtue subsides and immorality prevails, then I come to help mankind", says Krishna He also says, "Fools, not knowing that I, the

Omnipotent and Omnipresent God of the universe, have taken this human

form, deride Me and think that cannot be." Their minds have been clouded with demoniacal ignorance, so they cannot see in Him the Lord of the universe

These great Incarnations of God are to be worshipped Not only so, they alone can be worshipped; and on the days of their birth, and on the days when they went out of this world, we ought to pay more particular reverence to them In worshipping Christ I would rather worship Him just as He desires; on the day

of His birth I would rather worship Him by fasting than by feasting — by

praying When these are thought of, these great ones, they manifest themselves

in our souls, and they make us like unto them Our whole nature changes, and

we become like them

But you must not mix up Christ or Buddha with hobgoblins flying through the air and all that sort of nonsense Sacrilege! Christ coming into a spiritualistic seance to dance! I have seen that presence in this country It is not in that way that these manifestations of God come The very touch of one of them will be

manifest upon a man; when Christ touches, the whole soul of man will change,

that man will be transfigured just as He was His whole life will be

spiritualised; from every pore of his body spiritual power will emanate What were the great powers of Christ in miracles and healing, in one of his

character? They were low, vulgar things that He could not help doing because

He was among vulgar beings Where was this miracle-making done? Among the Jews; and the Jews did not take Him Where was it not done? In Europe The miracle-making went to the Jews, who rejected Christ, and the Sermon on the Mount to Europe, which accepted Him The human spirit took on what was

true and rejected what was spurious The great strength of Christ is not in His miracles or His healing Any fool could do those things Fools can heal others, devils can heal others I have seen horrible demoniacal men do wonderful

miracles They seem to manufacture fruits out of the earth I have known fools and diabolical men tell the past, present, and future I have seen fools heal at a glance, by the will, the most horrible diseases These are powers, truly, but

often demoniacal powers The other is the spiritual power of Christ which will live and always has lived - an almighty, gigantic love, and the words of truth which He preached The action of healing men at a glance is forgotten, but His saying, "Blessed are the pure in heart", that lives today These words are a

gigantic magazine of power — inexhaustible So long as the human mind lasts,

so long as the name of God is not forgotten, these words will roll on and on and never cease to be These are the powers Jesus taught, and the powers He had The power of purity; it is a definite power So in worshipping Christ, in praying

to Him, we must always remember what we are seeking Not those foolish

things of miraculous display, but the wonderful powers of the Spirit, which make man free, give him control over the whole of nature, take from him the badge of slavery, and show God unto him

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THE NEED OF SYMBOLS

Bhakti is divided into two portions One is called Vaidhi, formal or ceremonial; the other portion is called Mukhyâ, supreme The word Bhakti covers all the ground between the lowest form of worship and the highest form of life All the worship that you have seen in any country in the world, or in any religion, is regulated by love There is a good deal that is simple ceremony; there is also a good deal which, though not ceremony, is still not love, but a lower state Yet these ceremonies are necessary The external part of Bhakti is absolutely

necessary to help the soul onward Man makes a great mistake when he thinks that he can at once jump to the highest state If a baby thinks he is going to be

an old man in a day, he is mistaken; and I hope you will always bear in mind this one ideal, that religion is neither in books, nor in intellectual consent, nor

in reasoning Reason, theories, documents, doctrines, books, religious

ceremonies, are all helps to religion: religion itself consists in realisation We

all say, "There is a God." Have you seen God? That is the question You hear a man say, "There is God in heaven." You ask him if he has seen Him, and if he says he has, you would laugh at him and say he is a maniac With most people religion is a sort of intellectual assent and goes no further than a document I would not call it religion It is better to be an atheist than to have that sort of religion Religion does not depend on our intellectual assent or dissent You say there is a soul Have you seen the soul? How is it we all have souls and do not see them? You have to answer the question and find out the way to see the

soul If not, it is useless to talk of religion If any religion is true, it must be able

to show us the soul and show us God and the truth in ourselves If you and I fight for all eternity about one of these doctrines or documents, we shall never come to any conclusion People have been fighting for ages, and what is the outcome? Intellect cannot reach there at all We have to go beyond the intellect; the proof of religion is in direct perception The proof of the existence of this wall is that we see it; if you sat down and argued about its existence or non-existence for ages, you could never come to any conclusion; but directly you see it, it is enough If all the men in the world told you it did not exist, you

would not believe them, because you know that the evidence of your own eyes

is superior to that of all the doctrines and documents in the world

To be religious, you have first to throw books overboard The less you read of books, the better for you; do one thing at a time It is a tendency in Western countries, in these modern times, to make a hotchpotch of the brain; all sorts of unassimilated ideas run riot in the brain and form a chaos without ever

obtaining a chance to settle down and crystallise into a definite shape In many cases it becomes a sort of disease, but this is not religion Then some want a sensation Tell them about ghosts and people coming from the North Pole or any other remote place, with wings or in any other form, and that they are

invisibly present and watching over them, and make them feel uncanny, then they are satisfied and go home; but within twenty-four hours they are ready for

a fresh sensation This is what some call religion This is the way to the lunatic asylum, and not to religion The Lord is not to be reached by the weak, and all these weird things tend to weakness Therefore go not near them; they only make people weak, bring disorder to the brain, weaken the mind, demoralise the soul, and a hopeless muddle is the result You must bear in mind that

religion does not consist in talk, or doctrines, or books, but in realisation; it is

not learning, but being Everybody knows, "Do not steal", but what of it? That

man has really known who has not stolen Everybody knows, "Do not injure others", but of what value is it? Those who have not done so have realised it, they know it and have built their character on it Religion is realising; and I will call you a worshipper of God when you have become able to realise the Idea Before that it is the spelling of the weird, and no more It is this power of

realisation that makes religion No amount of doctrines or philosophies or

ethical books, that you may have stuffed into your brain, will matter much,

only what you are and what you have realised So we have to realise religion,

and this realisation of religion is a long process When men hear of something very high and wonderful, they all think they will get that, and never stop for a moment to consider that they will have to work their way up to it; they all want

to jump there If it is the highest, we are for it We never stop to consider

whether we have the power, and the result is that we do not do anything You cannot take a man with a pitchfork and push him up there; we all have to work

up gradually Therefore the first part of religion is Vaidhi Bhakti, the lower phase of worship

What are these lower phases of worship? They are various In order to attain to the state where we can realise, we must pass through the concrete — just as

you see children learn through the concrete first — and gradually come to the abstract If you tell a baby that five times two is ten, it will not understand; but

if you bring ten things and show how five times two is ten, it will understand Religion is a long, slow process We are all of us babies here; we may be old, and have studied all the books in the universe, but we are all spiritual babies

We have learnt the doctrines and dogmas, but realised nothing in our lives We shall have to begin now in the concrete, through forms and words, prayers and ceremonies; and of these concrete forms there will be thousands; one form need not be for everybody Some may be helped by images, some may not Some require an image outside, others one inside the brain The man who puts it

inside says, "I am a superior man When it is inside it is all right; when it is

outside, it is idolatry, I will fight it." When a man puts an image in the form of

a church or a temple, he thinks it is holy; but when it is in a human form, he objects to it!

So there are various forms through which the mind will take this concrete

exercise; and then, step by step, we shall come to the abstract understanding, abstract realisation Again, the same form is not for everyone; there is one form that will suit you, and another will suit somebody else, and so on All forms, though leading to the same goal, may not be for all of us Here is another

mistake we generally make My ideal does not suit you; and why should I force

it on you? My fashion of building churches or reading hymns does not suit you; why should I force it on you? Go into the world and every fool will tell you that his form is the only right one, that every other form is diabolical, and he is the only chosen man ever born in the universe But in fact, all these forms are good and helpful Just as there are certain varieties in human nature, so it is necessary that there should be an equal number of forms in religion; and the more there are, the better for the world If there are twenty forms of religion in the world, it is very good; if there are four hundred, so much the better — there will be the more to choose from So we should rather be glad when the number

of religions and religious ideas increase and multiply, because they will then include every man and help mankind more Would to God that religions

multiplied until every man had his own religion, quite separate from that of any other! This is the idea of the Bhakti-Yogi

The final idea is that my religion cannot be yours, or yours mine Although the

goal and the aim are the same, yet each one has to take a different road,

according to the tendencies of his mind; and although these roads are various, they must all be true, because they lead to the same goal It cannot be that one

is true and the rest not The choosing of one's own road is called in the

language of Bhakti, Ishta, the chosen way

Then there are words All of you have heard of the power of words, how

wonderful they are! Every book — the Bible, the Koran, and the Vedas — is full of the power of words Certain words have wonderful power over mankind Again, there are other forms, known as symbols Symbols have great influence

on the human mind But great symbols in religion were not created indefinitely

We find that they are the natural expressions of thought We think

symbolically All our words are but symbols of the thought behind, and

different people have come to use different symbols without knowing the

reason why It was all behind, and these symbols are associated with the

thoughts; and as the thought brings the symbol outside, so the symbol, on the contrary, can bring the thought inside So one portion of Bhakti tells about

these various subjects of symbols and words and prayers Every religion has prayers, but one thing you must bear in mind — praying for health or wealth is not Bhakti, it is all Karma or meritorious action Praying for any physical gain

is simply Karma, such as a prayer for going to heaven and so forth One that wants to love God, to be a Bhakta, must discard all such prayers He who wants

to enter the realms of light must first give up this buying and selling this

"shopkeeping" religion, and then enter the gates It is not that you do not get what you pray for; you get everything, but such praying is a beggar's religion

"Foolish indeed is he who, living on the banks of the Ganga, digs a little well for water A fool indeed is the man who, coming to a mine of diamonds, seeks for glass beads." This body will die some time, so what is the use of praying for its health again and again? What is there in health and wealth? The wealthiest man can use and enjoy only a little portion of his wealth We can never get all the things of this world; and if not, who cares? This body will go, who cares for these things? If good things come, welcome; if they go away, let them go

Blessed are they when they come, and blessed are they when they go We are striving to come into the presence of the King of kings We cannot get there in

a beggar's dress Even if we wanted to enter the presence of an emperor, should

we be admitted? Certainly not We should be driven out This is the Emperor of

emperors, and in these beggar's rags we cannot enter Shopkeepers never have admission there; buying and selling have no place there As you read in the Bible, Jesus drove the buyers and sellers out of the Temple Do not pray for little things If you seek only bodily comforts, where is the difference between men and animals? Think yourselves a little higher than that

So it goes without saying that the first task in becoming a Bhakta is to give up all desires of heaven and other things The question is how to get rid of these desires What makes men miserable? Because they are slaves, bound by laws, puppets in the hand of nature, tumbled about like playthings We are

continually taking care of this body that anything can knock down; and so we are living in a constant state of fear I have read that a deer has to run on the average sixty or seventy miles every day, because it is frightened We ought to know that we are in a worse plight than the deer The deer has some rest, but

we have none If the deer gets grass enough it is satisfied, but we are always multiplying our wants It is a morbid desire with us to multiply our wants We have become so unhinged and unnatural that nothing natural will satisfy us We are always grasping after morbid things, must have unnatural excitement — unnatural food, drink, surroundings, and life As to fear, what are our lives but bundles of fear? The deer has only one class of fear, such as that from tigers, wolves, etc Man has the whole universe to fear

How are we to free ourselves from this is the question Utilitarians say, "Don't talk of God and hereafter; we don't know anything of these things, let us live happily in this world." I would be the first to do so if we could, but the world will not allow us As long as you are a slave of nature, how can you? The more you struggle, the more enveloped you become You have been devising plans

to make you happy, I do not know for how many years, but each year things seem to grow worse Two hundred years ago in the old world people had few wants; but if their knowledge increased in arithmetical progression, their wants increased in geometrical progression We think that in salvation at least our desires will be fulfilled, so we desire to go to heaven This eternal,

unquenchable thirst! Always wanting something! When a man is a beggar, he wants money When he has money, he wants other things, society; and after that, something else Never at rest How are we to quench this? If we get to heaven, it will only increase desire If a poor man gets rich, it does not quench

his desires, it is only like throwing butter on the fire, increasing its bright

flames Going to heaven means becoming intensely richer, and then desire

comes more and more We read of many human things in heaven in the

different Bibles of the world; they are not always very good there; and after all, this desire to go to heaven is a desire after enjoyment This has to be given up

It is too little, too vulgar a thing for you to think of going to heaven It is just the same as thinking, I will become a millionaire and lord it over people There are many of these heavens, but through them you cannot gain the right to enter the gates of religion and love

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THE CHIEF SYMBOLS

There are two Sanskrit words, Pratika and Pratimâ Pratika means coming

towards, nearing In all countries you find various grades of worship In this country, for instance, there are people who worship images of saints, there are people who worship certain forms and symbols Then there are people who worship different beings who are higher than men, and their number is

increasing very rapidly — worshippers of departed spirits I read that there are something like eight millions of them here Then there are other people who worship certain beings of higher grade — the angels, the gods, and so forth Bhakti-Yoga does not condemn any one of these various grades, but they are all classed under one name, Pratika These people are not worshipping God, but Pratika, something which is near, a step towards God This Pratika worship cannot lead us to salvation and freedom; it can only give us certain particular things for which we worship them For instance, if a man worships his departed ancestors or departed friends, he may get certain powers or certain information from them Any particular gift that is got from these objects of worship is

called Vidyâ, particular knowledge; but freedom, the highest aim, comes only

by worship of God Himself Some Orientalists think, in expounding the Vedas, that even the Personal God Himself is a Pratika The Personal God may be a Pratika, but the Pratikas are neither the Personal nor Impersonal God They cannot be worshipped as God So it would be a great mistake if people thought that by worshipping these different Pratikas, either as angels, or ancestors, or Mahâtmâs (holy men, saints), etc., or departed spirits, they could ever reach to freedom At best they can only reach to certain powers, but God alone can

make us free But because of that they are not to be condemned, their worship produces some result The man who does not understand anything higher may get some power, some enjoyment, by the worship of these Pratikas; and after a long course of experience, when he will be ready to come to freedom, he will

of his own accord give up the Pratikas

Of these various Pratikas the most prevalent form is the worship of departed friends Human nature — personal love, love for our friends — is so strong in

us that when they die, we wish to see them once more — clinging on to their

forms We forget that these forms while living were constantly changing, and when they die, we think they become constant, and that we shall see them so Not only so, but if I have a friend or a son who has been a scoundrel, as soon as

he dies, I begin to think he is the saintliest person in existence; he becomes a god There are people in India who, if a baby dies, do not burn it, but bury it and build a temple over it; and that little baby becomes the god of that temple This is a very prevalent form of religion in many countries, and there are not wanting philosophers who think this has been the origin of all religions Of

course they cannot prove it We must remember, however, that this worship of Pratikas can never bring us to salvation or to freedom

Secondly, it is very dangerous The danger is that these Pratikas,

"nearing-stages", so far as they lead us on to a further stage, are all right; but the chances are ninety-nine to one that we shall stick to the Pratikas all our lives It is very good to be born in a church, but it is very bad to die there To make it clearer, it

is very good to be born in a certain sect and have its training — it brings out our higher qualities; but in the vast majority of cases we die in that little sect,

we never come out or grow That is the great danger of all these worships of Pratikas One says that these are all stages which one has to pass, but one never gets out of them; and when one becomes old, one still sticks to them If a young man does not go to church, he ought to be condemned But if an old man goes

to church, he also ought to be condemned; he has no business with this child's play any more; the church should have been merely a preparation for

something higher What business has he any more with forms and Pratikas and all these preliminaries?

Book worship is another strong form of this Pratika, the strongest form You find in every country that the book becomes the God There are sects in my country who believe that God incarnates and becomes man, but even God

incarnate as man must conform to the Vedas, and if His teachings do not so conform, they will not take Him Buddha is worshipped by the Hindus, but if you say to them, "If you worship Buddha, why don't you take His teachings?" they will say, because they, the Buddhists, deny the Vedas Such is the

meaning of book worship Any number of lies in the name of a religious book are all right In India if I want to teach anything new, and simply state it on my own authority, as what I think, nobody will come to listen to me; but if I take

some passage from the Vedas, and juggle with it, and give it the most

impossible meaning, murder everything that is reasonable in it, and bring out

my own ideas as the ideas that were meant by the Vedas, all the fools will

follow me in a crowd Then there are men preaching a sort of Christianity that would frighten the ordinary Christian out of his wits; but they say, "This is

what Jesus Christ meant", and many come round them People do not want

anything new, if it is not in the Vedas or the Bible It is a case of nerves: when you hear a new and striking thing, you are startled; or when you see a new

thing, you are startled; it is constitutional It is much more so with thoughts The mind has been running in ruts, and to take up a new idea is too much of a strain; so the idea has to be put near the ruts, and then we slowly take it It is a good policy, but bad morality Think of the mass of incongruities that

reformers, and what you call the liberal preachers, pour into society today

According to Christian Scientists, Jesus was a great healer; according to the Spiritualists, He was a great psychic; according to the Theosophists, He was a Mahâtmâ All these have to be deduced from the same text There is a text in the Vedas which says, "Existence (Sat) alone existed, O beloved, nothing else existed in the beginning" Many different meanings are given to the word Sat in this text The Atomists say the word meant "atoms", and out of these atoms the world has been produced The Naturalists say it meant "nature", and out of

nature everything has come The Shunyavâdins (maintainers of the Void) say it meant "nothing", "zero", and out of nothing everything has been produced The Theists say it meant "God", and the Advaitists say it was "Absolute Existence", and all refer to the same text as their authority

These are the defects of book worship But there is, on the other hand, a great advantage in it: it gives strength All religious sects have disappeared excepting those that have a book Nothing seems to kill them Some of you have heard of the Parsees They were the ancient Persians, and at one time there were about a hundred millions of them The majority of them were conquered by the Arabs, and converted to Mohammedanism A handful fled from their persecutors with their book, which is still preserving them A book is the most tangible form of God Think of the Jews; if they had not had a book, they would have simply melted into the world But that keeps them up; the Talmud keeps them

together, in spite of the most horrible persecution One of the great advantages

of a book is that it crystallises everything in tangible and convenient form, and

is the handiest of all idols Just put a book on an altar and everyone sees it; a good book everyone reads I am afraid I may be considered partial But, in my opinion books have produced more evil than good They are accountable for many mischievous doctrines Creeds all come from books, and books are alone responsible for the persecution and fanaticism in the world Books in modern times are making liars everywhere I am astonished at the number of liars

abroad in every country

The next thing to be considered is the Pratima, or image, the use of images All over the world you will find images in some form or other With some, it is in the form of a man, which is the best form If I wanted to worship an image I would rather have it in the form of a man than of an animal, or building, or any other form One sect thinks a certain form is the right sort of image, and

another thinks it is bad The Christian thinks that when God came in the form

of a dove it was all right, but if He comes in the form of a fish, as the Hindus say, it is very wrong and superstitious The Jews think if an idol be made in the form of a chest with two angels sitting on it, and a book on it, it is all right, but

if it is in the form of a man or a woman, it is awful The Mohammedans think that when they pray, if they try to form a mental image of the temple with the Caaba, the black stone in it, and turn towards the west, it is all right, but if you form the image in the shape of a church it is idolatry This is the defect of

image-worship Yet all these seem to be necessary stages

In this matter it is of supreme importance to think what we ourselves believe What we have realised, is the question What Jesus, or Buddha, or Moses did is nothing to us, unless we too do it for ourselves It would not satisfy our hunger

to shut ourselves up in a room and think of what Moses ate, nor would what

Moses thought save us My ideas are very radical on these points Sometimes I

think that I am right when I agree with all the ancient teachers, at other times I think they are right when they agree with me I believe in thinking

independently I believe in becoming entirely free from the holy teachers; pay all reverence to them, but look at religion as an independent research I have to find my light, just as they found theirs Their finding the light will not satisfy

us at all You have to become the Bible, and not to follow it, excepting as

paying reverence to it as a light on the way, as a guide-post, a mark: that is all the value it has But these images and other things are quite necessary You

may try to concentrate your mind, or even to project any thought You will find that you naturally form images in your mind You cannot help it Two sorts of persons never require any image — the human animal who never thinks of any religion, and the perfected being who has passed through these stages Between these two points all of us require some sort of ideal, outside and inside It may

be in the form of a departed human being, or of a living man or woman This is clinging to personality and bodies, and is quite natural We are prone to

concretise How could we be here if we did not concretise? We are concreted spirits, and so we find ourselves here on this earth Concretisation has brought

us here, and it will take us out Going after things of the senses has made us human beings, and we are bound to worship personal beings, whatever we may say to the contrary It is very easy to say "Don't be personal"; but the same man who says so is generally most personal His attachment for particular men and women is very strong; it does not leave him when they die, he wants to follow them beyond death That is idolatry; it is the seed, the very cause of idolatry; and the cause being there it will come out in some form Is it not better to have

a personal attachment to an image of Christ or Buddha than to an ordinary man

or woman? In the West, people say that it is bad to kneel before images, but they can kneel before a woman and say, "You are my life, the light of my eyes,

my soul." That is worse idolatry What ifs this talk about my soul my life? It will soon go away It is only sense-attachment It is selfish love covered by a mass of flowers Poets give it a good name and throw lavender-water and all sorts of attractive things over it Is it not better to kneel before a statue of

Buddha or the Jina conqueror and say, "Thou art my life"? I would rather do

that

There is another sort of Pratika which is not recognised in Western countries, bout is taught in our books This teaches the worship of mind as God Anything that is worshipped as God is a stage, a nearing, as it were An example of this is the method of showing the fine star known as Arundhati, near the group

Pleiades One is shown a big star near to it, and when he has fixed his attention

on this and has come to know it, he is shown a finer and still nearer star; and when he has fixed his attention on that, he is led up to Arundhati So all these various Pratikas and Pratimas lead to God The worship of Buddha and of

Christ constitute a Pratika a drawing near to the worship of God But this

worship of Buddha and of Christ will not save a man, he must go beyond them

to Him who manifested Himself as Jesus Christ, for God alone can give us

freedom There are even some philosophers who say these should he regarded

as God; they are not Pratikas, but God Himself However, we can take all these different Pratikas, these different stages of approach, and not be hurt by them: but if we think while we are worshipping them that we are worshipping God,

we are mistaken If a man worships Jesus Christ, and thinks he will be saved by that, he is mistaken entirely If a man thinks that by worshipping an idol or the ghosts or spirits of the departed he will be saved, he is entirely mistaken We

may worship anything by seeing God in it, if we can forget the idol and see

God there We must not project any image upon God But we may fill any

image with that Life which is God Only forget the image, and you are right enough — for "Out of Him comes everything" He is everything We may

worship a picture as God, but not God as the picture God in the picture is right,

but the picture as God is wrong God in the image is perfectly right There is no

danger there This is the real worship of God But the image-God is a mere

begin to think of Him, He acquires both name and form The Chitta is like the

calm lake, thoughts being like waves upon this Chitta — and name and form are the normal ways in which these waves arise; no wave can rise without name and form The uniform cannot be thought of; it is beyond thought; as soon as it becomes thought and matter, it must have name and form We cannot separate these It is said in many books that God created the universe out of the Word Shabdabrahman, in Sanskrit, is the Christian theory of the Word An old Indian theory, it was taken to Alexandria by Indian preachers and was planted there Thus the idea of the Word and the Incarnation became fixed there

There is deep meaning in the thought that God created everything out of the Word God Himself being formless, this is the best way to describe the

projection of forms, or the creation The Sanskrit word for creation is Srishti, projection What is meant by "God created things out of nothing"? The